US NEWS Ranking, A few surprises

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@tk21769 : I think a bit of statistics is helpful for parents/students/schools which are obsessed with rankings to understand there might be consequences. According to https://studenthealth.uiowa.edu/assets/Uploads/2018-NCHA-Report2.pdf

Forty percent of college students in 2018 reported feeling “overwhelmingly anxious,” while 20 percent said they felt “so depressed it was difficult to function,” according to the National College Health Assessment. Thirteen percent said they had considered suicide in the last year.

Number one “top stressors”? Academics.

A couple weeks ago a NY Times article titled “Feeling Suicidal, Students Turned to Their College. They Were Told to Go Home.” features Stanford University. Since those students who went home are not active students, I highly doubt they are counted in any of those college rankings statistics. So retention rate is not likely to be an accurate measurement of how many students have gone home.

I came to the conclusion that obsession of rankings and ignorance of mental health problems is the leading cause of this epidemic. Considering this case at UPenn (must read: https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2014/05/23/penn-suicides-madison-holleran/), it is very clear that she has chosen the wrong school. She knew she chose the wrong school. But she chose to jump from the top of the parking garage instead of transferring out. She should have gone to Lehigh University but Ivy League name was too attractive to give up. Also, according to the same article:

In terms of mental health, Penn students face a unique challenge. The school culture is notoriously competitive, a battle among valedictorian-level intellects where a Work harder, play harder mentality runs from the Wharton Business School to the humanities and sciences. Last year, 34th Street Magazine published a survey that found 71 percent of Penn students got blackout drunk at least once in college. For close to 25 percent, blacking out was the goal. Some kids also talk about a phenomenon called “Penn Face,” in which students express how stressful their lives are without ever showing any strain.
…
A scoop by Penn’s student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, turned up documents that revealed students often endure three-to-four-week waits for an initial visit — an eternity for someone struggling with the sudden onset of a mental illness. Those documents lent support to similar reports Penn students gave me. CAPS’s 38 full-time staff members are a mix of psychiatrists, social workers and interns. Cornell, in the wake of its own spate of suicides, has roughly 3,000 fewer students than Penn but an equal number of staffers.

A simple calculation told me that there are at least hundreds of patients. How can it be so difficult to get an appointment if there are 38 full-time staff in the office?

This recent NY Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/12/us/college-student-suicide-hamilton.html) details another case at UPenn two years later.

Regarding “food of happiness”, my kid sent me a photo of “taiyaki ice scream” sold at Brown dinning hall last night (first time available). (What?? Taiyaki Ice Scream ?? https://www.google.com/search?q=Taiyaki+Ice+Cream&client=firefox-b-1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicrbGikcrdAhWvmOAKHTZqBPMQsAR6BAgDEAE&biw=1352&bih=636)
I am definitely not worried this issue myself but please consider this issue when you/your kid chooses a school.

So @tk21769 and UChicago lovers, given the information above, I hope you understand that why I think it is especially important for UChicago to choose the right students. Someone links a video above saying that UChicago is #1 for academics.